I don't want to be a pest, but I guess it takes a while to get an answer. I'm willing to go back curly if that's what I have to do; I just want to know if it sounds like I have damaged hair or I just had an isolated incident from the curling iron. I've had a lot of views, so I thought maybe I worded my question wrong. I guess I'm over anxious, but I'm so worried about my hair because the curls really look bad - not like I remember them looking when I used to wear my hair curly all the time (some are straight, but I think that is from straightening them for so long, but I see from reading about damaged curly hair that the curls can become straight, and that worries me). If my hair were longer I wouldn't mind, but it's only about 2" below my chin and not being cut for curls, it looks really bad.

It sounds a bit damages to me, if you have straight/uneven patches and you used to use heat on your hair. Take it easy for a little and give your hair some TLC, read up on hair properties so you can learn how to choose the right products for your hair You're probably going to need both protein and moisture for your hair.

Thanks for answering me, Sweet Squatchii! To answer your questions, I just discovered the damage a few days ago and didn't know anything about what to do so I bought all the Ouidad products (probably not a nice name on this forum, sorry) and used her "rake & shake" method.

I have never chemically relaxed my hair, only flat ironed it or blow dried it.

Like I said, it's only been a few days since I let my hair go curly, but as I said in my first post, I'm not really happy about it. I'm not really sure that it's damaged or the curling iron was so old that it broke a piece of my hair off. But now that's it's curly, my curls don't look pretty like they used to - some are straight, but I thought that was because I had been straightening them for so long. My hair is not as thick as it used to be when I was younger so it's thinner, and the curls are hanging kind of limp.

Ouidad is def not a bad word here! In fact there are a lot of us on here who swear by some of her methods.

It sounds like you just need to give it time. Once you start treating your curls better they take some time to come back to life. I went CG and it took me a few weeks to see results. In between i had a LOT of scary hair days and I was almost on the bring of giving up. I'd suggest checking out Laura Lees blog for more help and info. It's a great starting point to help you figure out what you need to get your curls on the right track.

I'd also suggest trying a deep treatment or a DT as they call it on this site. There are also a few home recipes on the other forums that might help. Feel free to ask anymore questions too. Specifics help to get answers. Sometimes I might go for days without a response and sometimes I get one in five minutes. It's just random that way.